Split testing: from A to B

Split testing – a method, which publishers use to identify the most profitable page, comparing different versions of it.

Everybody who has ever worked with settings of advertising campaigns understands the main goal of A/B testing and its meaning for the future profit. Sometimes the fear of losing money or time is stronger than ambitions to get high profit. Then A/B testing is put on the back burner, campaigns are working ineffectively, business is suffering – if you buy cheaply, you pay dearly.

May split testing increase your profit twice?

A/B testing may become the starting point for the big changes, which will affect the quality of metrics. Even minor changes may increase CTR, the number of leads and profit. The result of split testing will surpass your costs.

Before starting A/B testing you need to choose main subjects for testing. The choice of the elements depends on the goals of your advertising campaigns and the results of analytics. If you don’t have any specific purpose, your split testings may show you unreliable results. Then you won’t have any structured information of reasons of bad CTR.

Before starting A/B testing ask yourself some easy questions which can help you to choose basic “breaking points”:

1. Is it easy to find your site in the search?
2. Is your site easy to use?
3. Does landing page help the user to solve problems and to answer his/her questions?
4. Do the users understand what they get finally?
5. Is the shift to action obvious enough?

Your honest answers can help to identify weak points and to focus on exact hypothesizes and changes. The result is often in the details.

The elements of A/B testing:

1. Landing pages;
2. Promo-materials;
3. Kinds of offers;
4. Sources;
5. GEOs;
6. Target audience;
7. Different CPA networks.

Change only one element in one test. Split testing can help to choose lucky colors of the buttons of action, best texts and headings, designs and colors – a magic cure-all for low CTR and ineffective campaigns. Ideas which worked well once don’t have to work again. Go testing!

What services for A/B testing can give you more useful information

• Optimizely – you don’t need to work with HTML codes here but you need to pay for easy interface and usage. The price for the subscription is from $20 to $400 depends on the conditions. With a help of this service, you can test not only PC landing page versions but mobiles too. You can find there the segmentation of the results and about 15 criteria of targeting.
• Abtasty.com – top international service: most usable interface, simple editor, different tools of settings – the subscription costs from €40 to €220.

We won’t publish the detailed order of work, there is a lot of information how to set A/B testing up. Read it attentively in case if you’ve never done split testing before.

Comparison is everything for cognition: A/B testing of different CPA networks

Choosing the partner for the future work everybody wants to hit the bull’s eye and choose the best one. It’s possible to secure yourself testing offers on different networks. Comparing the results of different promo you can check out that the results are extremely different: some creatives are super profitable and others – not.

To get objective data you need to comply with some terms:

• Choose the same period for the campaigns. Nutra is a quite periodical thing. The adult offers are on top in November, but in the summer – loss weight offers are the leaders of sales. It’s incorrect to compare offers in different periods. In this case, you won’t get the real result. To get exacter results you need to focus not only on the period but on the time of start of campaigns too.
• Focus on the same GEOs. The mentality, traditions, and attitude towards religion are different in different countries. The features of the GEOs and target audience are the real subjects of analytics and are important on the way to high profit. Something that was profitable in Italy can never become profitable in Asia because of the reasons which don’t depend on the quality of your promos. Every GEO is unique. Doing split testing to find the truth, you need to understand the difference between GEOs and make the same conditions for your campaigns.
• The matters of the offers should be the same. To compare the spray for hair and enlargement cream is strange. Every offer has a unique target audience, which can be different in age, gender, interests and “pains”. To compare them in the same conditions means to lose the chance to get useful details.
• Choose the same sources. An equality doesn’t give rise to a war. The same conditions for landing pages and offers can show the real situation. As in the case of GEOs – different sources can work in different ways. You can combine “adult” offers and advertising networks or “health and beauty” offers with social networks. Don’t cut one size fits all. The FB results of the offer and the results of the offer which works well in advertising network will be different. Choose the basic criteria for you. Is it important to check out how the offer will work or how profitable the source is.
• Analyze the same amounts of the campaigns. If you are going to test 2 different offers in Italy on FB – provide them the same conditions and spend the same money. Giving to one offer $100 and $200 to the other never shows you the real situation.

Observing the terms you can get more useful information about offers or networks.

Split-testing of different offers: comparing encourages to the competition

If everything is clear with the affiliate network and you chose Leadbit but you can’t choose the most profitable offer – start split-testing. You can get more information about offers and promo-materials and more profit just using some extra rules.

You always can get what you want and qualitative split-testings of your partner’s offers can help you to get more.

The rules which you see above are good for comparing different networks. For comparing different offers you need some more conditions to get credible information.

• Nothing is a lead. The number of leads is important but it’s the first level of analytics. Compare everything you can compare. You need more information – the price per click, profit for one lead and other details about the offer.
• The form is important. The commodity of offers is relevant, but the form is important too. Compare offers of the same form – spray and spray, mask and mask and so on. Comparing similar offers give you correct information how profitable each offer is.
• 5 o’clock tea. Test different landing pages at the same time. For example, you’ve tested the landing page of Maxisize at 17.00 on Tuesday, try to test Machoman at absolutely the same time.
• Total test. Not only different time can affect the result. Use the same GEO, age, sex and other points in the settings of your campaigns.

Split-testing is a method which gives you the opportunity to check the effectiveness of the pages. This method is always motivating you and doesn’t let you stand still.